


to be born again

by viverella



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11457261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: “Do you really believe that all men are good?”“Do you really believe that all men are bad?”(cutscene)





	to be born again

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on tumblr you know I've descended very quickly into wondertrev hell and I'm finally done with finals/qualifying exams for my grad school program so uh here's a quick thing I wrote to get my feelings out?? it's v messy and kinda short and it's just an extra bonus scene that I imagine in the film, but I hope it's okay?????

The thing about being a spy is that after a while, you only know who you are in layers, in contrasts. The Steve who sits alone in his bunk, trying desperately to remember some shred of who he was before the war is not the same Steve who wakes up every morning in German occupied territory to put on his German uniform and German accent and steely German resolve. Every night, he peels his persona off layer by layer and scrubs himself clean until he’s red and shiny and new, and as he looks down at his hands, he thinks he might as well be looking at cellophane, there’s so little of him left.

The thing about war is that you stop making long term bets, that instead you find yourself bargaining with whatever higher power is out there to just survive another day, another hour, another minute. _Just this one mission, and the war will end_. _Just deliver this one more document, and my fight will be over._ And the whole time, you know this is a lie, that you’re deluding yourself into thinking something pretty and neat, because thinking anything else would be too heartbreaking. 

The thing about being a spy in a war is that you forget, eventually, what it means to be a real person, to dream of waking up in some sleepy town in the countryside with nothing but warm sun and lazy hours stretching before you, to know what it’s like to feel anything but hard, cold dirt caked under your fingernails and the constant dread of not knowing when the end will come, only that it will, inevitably, for everyone. You forget that you used to have hopes for what your future would be like, for going to bed feeling safe, for the promise of breakfast in the morning. 

Steve thinks, in hindsight, maybe this is why meeting Diana is so startling, like being thrown back into his own body. Because here’s this woman, somehow untouched by war and still believing in everything Steve grew up believing in, in the goodness of others, in the truth in simple things. He looks at her, in hindsight, and he thinks _oh_ , and he thinks _so this is what it means to dream again_.

It all hits him all at once, in Veld, after they storm the town from the trenches, after Diana proves the impossible, as he watches her laughing and hugging the villagers and kneeling in the dirt to greet the children, that he looks at her and for the first time, he thinks he can maybe see the end of the war on the horizon. He listens to her talking with the townspeople, her words coming out every bit as fluent and articulate as her English, and he wonders if maybe everything she’s been saying is true after all, Greek gods and bridges to a greater understanding and all. If maybe the solution to all this suffering could be so simple. 

“You did this,” he says in wonder, and what he means to say is something like _I can’t believe you’re real_ or _You’re the first good thing that’s come out of this war_ or even _If you really knew us, you’d know that we don’t deserve a kindness like you_. But she looks at him and smiles, and Steve feels something break open in his chest, like the foundation for his entire world, all the spying and secrecy and subterfuge, is built on the worst kind of lies.

Diana laughs, and Steve finds himself thinking that maybe he’d like to bottle up the sound for safe keeping, for those dark nights he fears that the worst of humanity will destroy them all. 

“ _We_ did,” she says, and it almost sounds like absolution, though Steve thinks privately to himself that he’s probably hearing things, constantly searching for reasons to make it, all of this, worth it. 

Steve watches Diana try beer for the first time and teaches her to dance like they do and bickers with her about the upcoming gala, and somewhere in between trying to remember for her what ordinary people do when the entire world isn’t falling apart and laughing with her about the tiny flakes of fluffy white snow that begin to land on them, Steve finds himself wishing, impossibly, for this evening to last forever, for the chance to put off tomorrow, just a little bit, so he can pretend like there’s not a ticking clock on all of this. Because this is the most normal Steve has felt in too long. Because it feels like coming home, warm and comforting and safe, even though Steve’s only known Diana for a few days. Because lately, Steve’s been so caught up in doing his job that he thinks he’s forgotten what it means to just be a person, without agenda, to just live. 

Steve manages to find their group some rooms to stay in with relative ease and tries not to think about the knot wound tight in his stomach and the families that almost certainly used to fill this town like they were running out of room. And he means to, really, truly, leave Diana in peace to rest before what’s sure to be a big day tomorrow and return the room he’s already agreed to share with Charlie and plan for the things that still need planning. But suddenly Diana is looking at him, her hair blown wild from the wind outside and her cheeks flushed from the cold, her eyes heavy and almost timid for once, like finally, there’s something new that she can’t be sure of, and every intention and thought of tomorrow goes flying out the window. He steps forward into the room and shuts the door behind him, and as he walks over towards her, he finds his mind filled with visions of the two of them in some quaint country house someday, eating pastries in bed and reading the newspaper to each other. It’s the most ridiculous thing Steve has ever caught himself thinking, but he doesn’t have much time to be embarrassed to himself about it, because suddenly, Diana’s close and she’s tracing her fingers along his face like _he_ the precious one and he thinks _You don’t even know_ , and then she kisses him and he thinks nothing at all except that if this never ended he’d be happy and full and whole. 

He kisses her and he kisses her and he kisses her, until they’ve shed their warm winter clothes and rumpled their neatly made bed into a mess of tangled sheets, and as they lay wrapped around each other, hair mussed and cheeks flushed and limbs loose and lazy, he finds himself thinking _Maybe in another world, every night could be like this_. 

After a moment of silence, Steve feels Diana’s eyes on him and he turns to look at her, eyebrow raised. “What?” he asks, almost startling himself with how much his voice comes out as a laugh. He can’t remember the last time he laughed so much as when he’s around her. 

She crinkles her brows, her thinking face, although the full effect is ruined a bit by the slight smile that’s pulling at the corners of her mouth. She pokes at his cheek. “You’re thinking an awful lot in there,” she says, the constant surety in her voice still ringing through, even now. “I can tell.”

Steve laughs and twirls a lock of her hair around his fingers. “Yeah?” he says. 

Diana nods and looks at him expectantly, rolling over onto her stomach so she can rest her chin on his chest. There’s a quiet seriousness about her that, for all her mirth, colors her expression with something almost grave and impossibly patient, like she could tell he’s been thinking about the inevitability of this grand adventure this whole time, like she could wait forever for the truths he keeps locked away inside of him. 

And part of Steve wants to ask her if she really believes that she’ll stop this whole war by killing one man, but Steve’s never been good at confronting the hard realities of his own life, except in pieces, except sidelong, so he asks instead, “Do you really believe that all men are good?” And it’s not quite as good, but it’s good enough, for now. 

Diana frowns at him, her expression falling into something thoughtful. “Do you really believe that all men are bad?” she counters, something in her voice doubtful like she can’t imagine fighting for a cause while being uncertain at the worth of the thing that needs saving. 

Steve lets out a long breath that sounds a little like a sigh. He thinks of the soldiers living day in and day out in cramped trenches, of the innumerable villages caught in the crossfire as collateral damage, of the young men arriving on the battlefront every day knowing with something close to certainty that they’ll join the ranks of the many who have already fallen. 

“I think all men have the potential to be bad,” Steve says carefully, because that’s the core of it, if he really thinks about it, because he can’t believe that a world like this could exist if human beings didn’t already have this inside themselves somewhere. 

Diana nods then, like she’s figured something out, and shifts to rest her head in the crook of his neck. “Then I think all men have the potential to be good,” she says, and when Steve doesn’t respond, she goes on, “I was talking to some of the soldiers today. They told me that in the first winter of the war, there was a day the men stopped fighting. It was a holiday and men from both sides who were supposed to be enemies became like friends, like brothers. They exchanged gifts and played together and the killing stopped.” She pauses, her last words echoing in their otherwise quiet room. For a moment, Steve thinks she’s done, but then she adds, quieter now, weightier, “If men were all bad, how could they do this?”

Steve feels something tight in his chest, wishing he could believe in the version of the world that she so clearly sees, but he’s seen too much and been in this for too long to entertain dreams that his own experience tells him can’t be true. Steve has always put his faith in things that he can see over all else, and even though part of him can’t bear to break the vision Diana has for the world, he can’t bring himself to believe in something when all the evidence he’s seen points to the contrary. 

“If men were all good,” Steve says, carefully, softly, hoping that Diana knows this isn’t somehow a slight, that it’s just the person the war has made him, “How could they go back to killing each other the next day? All those men who were like brothers?”

Diana is quiet and still for a long moment, and for a minute, Steve fears that he’s lost her, that in asking her this, he’s revealed too much about his own ugly flaws, but then she shifts closer to him and wraps her arms tightly around him, like she can protect him, like this will be enough, and she says, “It’s Ares. I’m sure of it.” 

And even though Steve knows that this is the realist idea in Diana’s life, even though she’s staked everything on it, Steve can’t bring himself to truly believe in it, because he’s seen what men are capable of and thinks to himself that it doesn’t take a god to create chaos like this. But as Steve looks down at Diana, he also thinks to himself that after everything he’s seen, after seeing her charge through No Man’s Land with little more than her shield and sheer willpower, after watching her blow through machine guns and tanks like they’re nothing, after all of that, he thinks that if there’s one thing he believes in anymore after the war has robbed him of everything else, it’s her. It’s her and the knowledge that come what may tomorrow, when they meet the Germans on their turf, as long as Diana makes it through, things will probably be okay, somehow. And maybe, for now, that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments and kudos are very very appreciated!!
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://chirrutimwae.tumblr.com) if you so desire!


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